Mbappé in Madrid, must now live up AIR to his boyhood idols

Europe's best club has finally landed the continent's greatest talent. How it looks on the pitch is another matter

- Sid Lowe

And so, at last, it ends. The longest-running transfer saga anyone could remember has finally reached its inevitable, overdue conclusion. Kylian Mbappé has joined Real Madrid. Yep. Shocking, isn't it? Actually, for everyone else, it probably is. "He would take us to the next level," Jude Bellingham said on Saturday night. While standing on the Wembley pitch. Having just won the Champions League. His team's sixth in a decade.

It is time. There is a photo you will have seen often. In it, a young Mbappé lies on his bed at home gazing up at the posters of Cristiano Ronaldo on his wall. There are others of him from a little later, aged 14, although he still looks small, not least because this time he is standing next to his idol. He would be big one day though, and they knew that already, which is why Mbappé had been invited to Valdebebas to train. They had to convince him as much as the other way round, so Zinedine Zidane had picked him up from the airport. In the car, nervous, Mbappé had asked if he should take his shoes off.

Identified early as the man, the kid, most likely to lead the next generation, Madrid had always wanted Mbappé to come and he had always wanted to go too. His was a managed career from the beginning, the idea always that he would end up at the Santiago Bernabéu. His family had wanted to find the best place for him and protect him from the pressure, which was already intense - and when he left Monaco for Paris SaintGermain on a €180m deal that was officially a loan first in 2017. Paris was home, a place where he could mature and achieve. The biggest objective of all, the Champions League, went unfulfilled in the end.